


captivity

by momentofclarity



Series: Short fics & drabbles [7]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Feelings, M/M, old men having and dealing with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29958225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentofclarity/pseuds/momentofclarity
Summary: you get to a point in life when your secrets aren't as holy as they once were.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: Short fics & drabbles [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/713517
Comments: 11
Kudos: 44





	captivity

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello loves. this is un-betaed, rambly and messy as hell. you might also know i've been struggling to write for over a year, so i've decided every word i get down that follows some other words are Publishable hah. 
> 
> this is an out of context dialouge that is part of one of my old daydream stories that i'll probably never write. but i love them very much, and here you get a small glimpse of what's Going On Inside My Brain. 
> 
> who knows if i'll get any more rambly words out at some point. if i do, i might post them here. as always, thank you a billion times for supporting my writing. this isn't in any way Writing I'm Proud Of, but i figure that's overrated for now.

“Why did we drift apart, back then?” Harry looks at him with a smile and glinting eyes, just a tint of seriousness there. 

Louis waits for his throat to grow impossibly tight and his belly to swoop nauseously, but it doesn’t happen. Not this time. Maybe never again. Maybe he’s forever past the point of being terrified. His own emotions not keeping him hostage anymore. Maybe it’s just today. A day where nothing seems important enough. 

“Is it because I’m gay?” Harry asks before he has the chance to answer. 

He’d laugh if he had the energy to. For all the fear he’s harboured in every muscle and bone, for all the times he’s thought himself too obvious, Harry hasn’t been anywhere near the reality of things. Has never been able to understand that Louis’ hesitation was never hatred or disgust, but something else entirely. Something much more terrifying and cruel. 

“Of course not,” Louis finally lets out, voice raspy from misuse and quiet sadness. 

He can feel Harry’s eyes boring into him, the pursing of his lips a question in itself. 

“It’s…” It takes him another few seconds to finally let go. 

To feel the last grip on hesitation slip away. His eyes burn and his limbs feel heavy. He’s spent decades watching his tongue. Apparently today is the day he lets the world burn.

“You know what…” Louis lets out a quiet chuckle, not knowing where to even begin. “When I was a kid I always… I always knew exactly what my life would be like. It didn’t matter that I was a weird kid or that I got picked on for being small. None of it mattered, because I knew I’d grow up and take care of the farm. Knew that every week would drag on the way they had for my dad and his dad before him. It was... I always knew and it was… it’s fine. I knew it was a good, honest, life.” 

Another chuckle escapes him, the irony of ‘honest’ not lost on him. 

“Then one day in sixth grade, you walk into math class and I… I was only a kid, but the first thought I had was ‘damn he’s beautiful’.”

An amused frown forms over Harry’s features and Louis’ eyes burn as he recalls that day. Burn with nostalgia and memories of past happy thoughts. He swallows against the lump of emotion welling up in his throat. Feelings for once not constrictive, but setting him free. 

He smiles.

“Then you walked right up to me, and I thought ‘there he is... my blessing’.” 

Louis can’t read the look in Harry’s eyes, the way they dash back and forth over Louis’ face, as if he’s trying to find something in the deep lines there. 

“Your blessing? What… what does that mean?”

“It means - we didn’t drift apart because you’re gay, it means… it means, we drifted apart because I had to let you go. Because I would’ve-” His words finally fail him, throat choking up and he needs to take a deep breath to continue. 

His gaze is blurry when he looks up. “I had to set you free.”

The amusement has faded from the tilt of Harry’s brow. “Set me free? What the fuck does that even  _ mean _ ? You were my best friend. I didn’t want you to - I thought you  _ hated  _ me.”

Harry’s voice is close to breaking and Louis has to close his eyes against the quiet force of it. “I could never hate you. I just. I didn’t want you to start hating  _ me,  _ I couldn’t stand the thought of you despising me.” 

“But, why would I? Where did this all come from, I…”

“You were my blessing,” Louis whispers and tears finally fall down the scratchy surface of his cheek. “I would’ve suffocated you, I would’ve… I didn’t want you to pity me, to-”

“You’re not making any sense -  _ why  _ would I? You were- you were  _ my world _ , where did you get this from?”

“I was in love with you.” 

The words ring loudly in the air between them, more honest than anything, and yet still tainted with a lie because there never was and never will be any past tense to that sentence. A lifetime later and Louis still feels the sting of it in his heart. In every breath and every sensation. 

“And you thought I’d hate you for that?” Harry sounds so broken and Louis hates it, because obviously Harry would never consciously hate him for anything. Would never willingly do anything to hurt him. And that’s the whole problem. The riddle he spent his teenage years trying to solve.

“You don’t belong here, you were always meant to get out there in the world and I didn’t… I couldn’t be greedy, because I’d already gotten to… he already gave me you.” 

“So you… you what - saw yourself as the maker of my fate? Didn’t think I had the ability to choose for myself?”

He can tell Harry is wavering between frustration and something he can’t put his finger on. 

“You deserved to find love Harry. What do you want me to say? You deserved everything that I got when I met you - you deserved to be happy. That’s all I wanted.” 

Louis is crying but he doesn’t feel broken. With every word that leaves his mouth, he feels like he can breathe just a bit more freely. 

Harry’s chest rises rapidly, like his heart is running a marathon beneath the cotton of his shirt. He turns his head from side to side in small twitches, like he’s trying to sort out unsettled thoughts. “But… but what about you?” 

A smile wavers at the corner of Louis’ mouth, because Harry is just proving his point. 

“That’s exactly it. That’s… I’d already found you, already knew you were… you deserved that too. To find your own blessing.”

“No.” The head twitches increase for a moment and then Harry looks up at him, eyes impossibly sad and Louis’ heart stutters. He never ever wants to see the other man hurting. “What makes you think that couldn’t be you?”

For a moment, Louis’ mind blanks, then slowly a jumbled mess of words try to arrange themselves into coherent thoughts, but he still struggles to make sense of them. 

“You…” Now his throat constricts so harshly it’s bordering on painful. Harry should know. “You weren’t… you didn’t love me like that.”

He’s always known it to be true. Always known that Harry’s gentle touches and whispered words weren’t for him. 

Harry lets out a broken bark of laughter. Too loud and sharp. “We were sixteen years old! Sixteen! I was- I was a fucking mess back then, you didn’t… I didn’t know  _ what  _ I wanted.”

Once this conversation is over and Harry has understood, Louis will probably pass out on the couch. Every sentence sets his insides onto another trajectory, and after the stab of pain he just felt, his brain now feels like the settling waves after a storm. 

“I know,” he says, and his fingers twitch with the wish to reach out and touch. To comfort. But after all this time, he’s more than used to letting that urge quietly fade. “But I did. I knew when I was twelve years old that you were it for me and I… I know it’s not… I knew it was too much, too serious, too… I didn’t want you to feel like you were letting me down.”

“And now I’m an old man who never found love, am I not?” The dimple dips in Harry’s cheek and Louis’ belly swoops at the sight, because it always has and always will.

“That’s not true and you know it.” He’d been to Harry’s wedding after all. Seen the look in those green eyes when they looked at his future husband. 

Harry’s dimple deepens. “Yeah, but… you broke my heart, Louis. You… you made me think that the person my whole world evolved around didn’t want me in his life anymore. That’s… I can’t help thinking you… you didn’t even give me a chance.”

Louis needs to let that sink in for a moment, wondering what it really means. He’s been so dead set on being right for so long, that it’s difficult to question it. To rewire his brain to consider a simple ‘what if’. 

“Does it even matter, though?” Is what comes out of his mouth eventually, because he really is quite tired. He’s not used to crying and reopening old wounds. He stopped doing that decades ago.

“I don’t know.” Harry says and reaches out, because Harry never had to force himself to hold back. A calloused hand lands on Louis’ forearm, thumb caressing slowly over the course hair. “Doesn’t it?”

Louis looks into eyes cleared up by tears, so green and tired. 

Glimmering and defeated. 

And he feels his heart pick up the pace, threatening to escape the captivity of his chest. 


End file.
